Wall▪E hits DVD and Blu-ray next Tuesday, November 18, on a streamlined single-disc version as well
as a three-disc special edition. The single-disc release will include
an audio commentary track with director Andrew Stanton; deleted scenes; Presto, the animated short shown prior to the movie in theaters; a sneak peek of Wall▪E’s Tour of the Universe; a
special featurette with sound designer/voice of Wall▪E Ben Burtt; and an all-new animated short featuring little sidekick robot Burn▪E (below).
The triple-disc DVD will include all the above items, plus: The Pixar Story,
Leslie Iwerks’ documentary history of Pixar’s beginnings; a look at
Wall▪E’s treasures and trinkets; a look inside the Buy ‘N’ Large
corporation featured in the movie; even more deleted scenes; an
interactive storybook and games; several making-of featurettes, and
much more. The film will release in Blu-ray in both two-disc and three-disc versions; both will include BD Live capabilities.
On the eve of the election, sign up to be notified when advance tickets go on sale for Will Ferrell’s January 20, 2009 Broadway bow, in the form of You’re Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush. After previews, the show officially opens on February 5, and runs through March 15, at the Cort Theatre, on West 48th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues.
In addition to its previous announcements regarding the feting of Clint Eastwood, Ben Stiller, Marisa Tomei and the ensemble cast of The Secret Life of Bees, the 12th annual Hollywood Film Festival, co-chaired by Paul Haggis and presented by Starz, announced that they would also be honoring Dustin Hoffman, Josh Brolin and Kristin Scott Thomas at the festival’s Hollywood Awards Gala Ceremony, which will take place
on October 27, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Hollywood icon Hoffman will be
honored with the “Hollywood Career Achievement Award,” Brolin with the “Hollywood Actor of the Year Award,” and Thomas with the “Hollywood Actress of the Year Award.” For more information, click here.
Well, “Inglorious Bastards” is no more, but that shouldn’t bring a smug exhalation from Michael Madsen just yet. In a press release today touting the start of principal photography on the film in Germany last week, it was confirmed that Quentin Tarantino is going the same English-mangling route as The Pursuit of Happyness, and that the film will be released as Inglourious Basterds.
The ensemble cast includes Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Brühl, Eli Roth, Samm Levine, B.J. Novak, Til Schweiger, Gedeon Burkhard, Paul Rust, Michael Bacall, Omar Doom, Sylvester Groth, Julie Dreyfus, Jacky Ido, August Diehl, Martin Wuttke, Richard Sammel, Christian Berkel, Sönke Möhring, Michael Fassbender, Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, Denis Menochet and, yes, Cloris Leachman.
The film — which will shoot at Studio Babelsberg as well as in Berlin, Saxony and Paris — begins in German-occupied France, where Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish-American soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” Raine’s squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own.
Inglourious Basterds reunites Tarantino with Academy Award-nominated
editor Sally Menke, Oscar-winning director of photography Bob
Richardson and production designer David Wasco; joining Tarantino for
the first time is costume designer Anna
Sheppard. The film will be released worldwide in 2009, with The Weinstein Company handling domestic duty and Universal releasing the film internationally.
So Nick Nolte is apparently OK after having first broken and then jumped from a window to escape from a fire at his house yesterday. The electrical fire started in the living room in the late morning and Nolte smelled the smoke from an upstairs bedroom, according to Fire Inspector Frank Garrido. It took firefighters about 26 minutes to douse the blaze, which caused roughly $3 million in total damage — half of it structural damage and half damage to the contents of the home, including “collectibles, artwork and furniture.” No word about Nolte’s diary, though.
The 12th annual Hollywood Film Festival and Hollywood Awards, co-chaired by Paul Haggis and presented by Starz, announced yesterday the honorees who will be recognized for their achievements at the festival’s gala ceremony, which will take place on October 27, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.
Fresh off the success of Tropic Thunder, multi-talented actor, director and producer Ben Stiller will be honored with the “Hollywood Comedy of the Year Award,” Academy Award winner Marisa Tomei with the “Hollywood Supporting Actress of the Year Award,” the cast of
Fox Searchlight’s forthcoming The Secret Life of Bees with the “Hollywood
Ensemble Acting of the Year Award” and newcomer Robert Pattinson with
the “New Hollywood Award.” For more information, click here.
The 12th annual Hollywood Film Festival, co-chaired by Paul Haggis and presented by Starz, announced earlier this week that Academy Award-winning director and producer Clint Eastwoodwill receive the “Hollywood Director of the Year Award” at the festival’s Hollywood Awards Gala Ceremony on October 27, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. “Clint Eastwood is truly an American film icon, and his impressive body of work exemplifies his extraordinary ability, craftsmanship and determination as an actor, director and producer,” said Carlos de Abreu, founder and Executive Director of the Hollywood Film Festival. “He continues to wow audiences with his creative vision as a filmmaker, and we are thrilled to honor him at the Hollywood Awards.” For more on the festival and its awards ceremony, click here.
Yesterday was a real bitch, schedule and work-load wise, but yielded some good experiences and future nuggets for the coming days and weeks. The most surreal part of the day, though, was leaving the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, and running into Pat Boone. Like, literally. He was a-comin’ in through the out door.
John McCain was a no show on The Late Show with David Letterman last night, prompting first good-natured needling and then apparently sincere ire from the host. “This stinks, it really is starting to smell,” said Letterman of McCain’s excuse that he was bailing on the show to immediately return to Washington, D.C. to deal with the collapsing economic bail-out Congressional negotiations, only to then turn around and sit for an interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric.
Filling McCain’s guest spot was MSNBC Countdown host Keith Olbermann, no friendly McCain surrogate, that’s for sure, and his swallowed, squirmy glee was on full display in the second segment, during which Letterman cut to live (at the time) footage of McCain getting make-up applied in advance of his chat with Couric. “Look, it’s like we caught him getting a manicure,” said Letterman, then adding, “Hey Senator, do you need a ride to the airport?”
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts/Los Angeles will honor actor and
director Sean Penn with its most prestigious film award, the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film, at the 2008 BAFTA/LA Britannia Awards on Thursday, November 6, at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel, it was announced today. “As a celebrated actor, director and producer, Sean has become a film icon over the past three decades,” said BAFTA/LA Chairman Peter Morris in a statement. “The roles and subject matter he chooses to tackle as a filmmaker are both challenging and inspiring to audiences worldwide.”
Penn, who has been nominated four times for the Academy Award as Best Actor, and won the
Oscar in 2003 for his searing performance as a grieving father in Clint Eastwood’s Mystic
River, will next portray gay rights icon Harvey Milk in Gus Van Sant’s biographical drama Milk, which is slated for a November release from Focus Features.
Proving herself a user of words, Tyra Banks has dedicated a very special episode of America’s Next Top Model to Laurence Fishburne, for reasons she makes clear in this posting on the show’s micro-site, housed on The CW’s main web site. It’s hard to say what’s best — the part where she talks about being blown away by Fishburne’s “fine-ness,” or when she realizes she actually did a movie with him, John Singleton’s Higher Learning.
Regardless, I think it’s safe to say that Banks is perhaps best seen and not heard, bless her soul.
After a couple small screen runs, Noah’s Arc, the landmark Logo Network cable show about the lives of a close-knit quartet of African-American gay men, is getting a limited theatrical release in the form of Noah’s Arc: Jumping the Broom, which will open in select theaters nationwide on October 24. For more information, click here.
Why yes, Dad, Lakeview Terrace is reviewed this week. You can access it by clicking here. In other news, I interviewed Kirk Cameron this week, and didn’t slip up and call him Mike Seaver. Score!
So Judd Apatow‘s super-secret new filmFunny People — with Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Bana and Apatow’s wife Leslie Mann — is being shot by… Oscar-winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski? Yes, it appears so, and at the express insistence of Apatow, I’m told. (Which makes sense, really, as his name assuredly wouldn’t have come up via other channels.) Solidly sourced word also places the film’s budget around $90 million, leading one to wonder if Universal learned their lesson with Evan Almighty, namely that mega-budgeted comedies are often a recipe for disaster. Oh, right, it’s a co-production with Sony. Spread the damage, then, I guess it makes Hollywood sense.
Film critic Roger Ebert has been more or less vocally silenced by complications from cancer of the salivary gland, but that hasn’t stopped him from assessing Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin as “the American Idol candidate” (i.e., good-looking, translates well on TV, has a sunny
personality, and is fiercely competitive) in this stinging piece. Pointedly: “You don’t need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has
the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the
country once, on an official tour to Iraq*? Sarah Palin’s travel record
is that of a provincial, not someone who is equipped to deal with
global issues.”
Fox Searchlight Pictures announced today that the company acquired U.S. rights to the buzz-heavy The Wrestler, which won the Golden Lion at the recent Venice Film Festival and just had its North American premiere last night at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky and written by Rob Siegel, The Wrestler centers around Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke), a tough guy who in the late 1980s was a headlining professional. Now, twenty years later, he ekes out a living performing for handfuls of diehard wrestling fans in high school gyms and community centers around New Jersey. Estranged from his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) and unable to sustain any real relationships, Randy lives for the thrill of the show and the adoration of his fans. When a heart attack forces him into retirement and his sense of identity starts to slip away, though, Randy begins to evaluate the state of his life — striking up a blossoming romance with an aging stripper (Marisa Tomei) and trying to reconnect with his daughter.
Said Fox Searchlight Pictures President Peter Rice: “Darren Aronofsky has created an
unbelievably electrifying and compelling tale with tour de force
performances. We are delighted to be releasing this brilliantly
executed film, and thank Wild Bunch for choosing Searchlight.” A December release is being scheduled.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation announced today that actor Ryan Reynolds has joined the foundation’s mission to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease. Reynolds will serve as the first Celebrity Chair of Team Fox, the foundation’s grassroots fund-raising arm made up of hundreds of volunteers across the country. Reynolds, along with 130 Team Fox members, will run the New York City Marathon on November 2 in honor of his father, who has Parkinson’s disease. “I’m proud to be a part of this team of dedicated and motivated people who are getting out there and making a difference,” said Reynolds. “The Michael J. Fox Foundation is doing whatever it takes to improve patients’ quality of life and deliver a cure to people living with PD, like my father.” For more information, click here.
Are paper dolls your thing, for some reason? Then by all means get collectible versions of both Barack Obama and John McCain, via Dover Publications’ site. The resemblances are a bit off, but McCain’s does have the stiff-arm thing going on. Looking at these, I’d love to see a film done with paper dolls, in the mold of Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Team America: World Police. Well… a short film, maybe… more along the lines of Todd Haynes’ Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, I guess.
Acclaimed rock ‘n’ rollers The Smashing Pumpkins, who’ve sold over 30 million albums, is coming to Activision’s Guitar Hero World Tour in a groundbreaking way, as the band will debut their new single “G.L.O.W.” exclusively in the game. This marks the first time a band has recorded a new song exclusively for the franchise that will then be released afterward, giving Guitar Hero fans exclusive access to Smashing Pumpkins music before anyone else. The new track, bundled with two of the group’s other hits, “1979” and “The Everlasting Gaze,” will be available after launch of the game as a three-song downloaded content pack. For more information, click here.
Honey West (Anne Francis), sensual and glamorous private eye, was something of a trendsetter in 1965 and ’66 — one of television’s first liberated females. In an era when actresses were frequently restrained to sedate housewives and girlfriend roles, this series marked an exceptional and original departure. And now it’s coming to DVD, via VCI Entertainment.
Producer Aaron Spelling spun the title character off a spring episode of Burke’s Law, “Who Killed the Jackpot?,” in which, true to form, Honey outwitted the suave detective played by Gene Barry. Later in the year, Honey West appeared as the first dramatic TV show with a female star in what might be classified as an action-adventure role. In the show, Honey inherited her spying business from her late father, a top private eye. As part of the deal, she also got his partner, rough and handsome Sam Bolt (John Ericson). There was a strong attraction and chemistry between the partners, but Honey’s only true love was the thrill of adventure and her pet ocelot, Bruce.
In addition to being TV’s first modern, independent, self-sufficient woman, Honey frequently engaged in fight scenes and shoot-outs. An expert at judo and a black-belt in karate, she was the first character on the American small screen, male or female, to use martial arts as self-defense. A la James Bond, Honey also owned an arsenal of special weapons and gadgets, including an exploding compact, a garter belt gas mask (!), teargas-emitting earrings and a lipstick microphone. Although short-lived, this series broke the mold and paved the way for future female action heroines, including Wonder Woman and the ladies from The Girl From U.N.C.L.E., The Bionic Woman and Alias.
Spread out over four region-free DVDs and housed in a regular Amray case, Honey West‘s 30 black-and-white episodes are presented in 1.33:1 full screen, with a Dolby digital mono sound mix. Bonus features include an Anne Francis photo gallery, vintage commercials and a separate behind-the-scenes photo gallery. To purchase the set on DVD via Amazon, click here.
Wall▪E, the latest hit animated collaboration from
Pixar/Disney, is set to hit DVD and Blu-ray on November 18. The former format will offer a streamlined single-disc version, as well as a three-disc special edition. The single-disc release will include these bonus features: an audio commentary track with director Andrew Stanton; Burn▪E, an all-new animated short featuring a little robot shown briefly in the film; deleted scenes; Presto, the animated short shown prior to Wall▪E in theaters; a sneak peek of Wall▪E’s Tour of the Universe; and a special featurette with sound designer/voice of Wall▪E Ben Burtt.
The triple-disc DVD will include all the above items, plus: The Pixar Story, Leslie Iwerks’ documentary history of Pixar’s beginnings; a look at Wall▪E’s treasures and trinkets; a look inside the Buy ‘N’ Large corporation featured in the movie; even more deleted scenes; an interactive storybook and games; several making-of featurettes, and much more. The film will release in Blu-ray in both two-disc and three-disc versions; both will include BD Live capabilities.
